An improbable hockey camp
Inner-city kids get all-day training session with the help of Toronto resident, facility manager
The convoy of hockey-parents stretched to 40 cars around the rink's drop-off loop last Friday.
But the 10 most unlikely newcomers to the Canlan Ice Sports intensive, day-long hockey camp arrived on foot, trekking across the parking lot, wide lanes and soggy grass surrounding the Jane and Steeles rink most local families rarely frequent.
The rookie players, still shaky on their skates and using hockey sticks as tripods, are part of Brookview Middle School's program to bring Canada's game to kids whose families could normally never afford the time or the money.
That seven-hour stint of skating and puck drills was the longest Vaithigan Varatharajan and Abishanth Sivanantham had spent on the ice - ever - in their two-year hockey careers.
"It was so much fun. I wish we could do that every day," said 13-year-old Vaithigan.
"No, every other day," Abishanth corrects him, grinning and wincing and miming his aching muscles.
"You need a day to recover."
The unusual treat - they also got free food, one boy notes - was thanks to Janet Maxymiw. The Toronto resident read about the Brookview Heroes hockey program in a Globe and Mail article. Remembering everything her own hockey-and-ringette-loving children had gotten out of their own ice sports, she had an epiphany.
"I was taken by this story: There's kids within our urban community who need a bit of a hand up," she said. "Our kids had benefited from a lot of hockey camps. ... We were interested in giving back, just in a little way."
She got in touch with Brookview's vice-principal and hockey coach, Mark Babiy, and the Canlan Ice Sports rink where his 40-odd budding hockey stars have been practising for months.
She offered to pay for five of them to attend an all-day training session. Canlan's programs manager Rob Miwa was so impressed, he paid for another five students himself.
The result?"These kids were soaked, they were tired, they were sore," Mr. Babiy said. "But they had a good time."
And, Mr. Miwa said, they seemed to enjoy the day more than anyone else there.
The players had their last practice yesterday afternoon before hanging up their skates for the summer. The dozens of middle-school students were triumphant with medals around their necks and a local television crew in tow.
Mr. Babiy is determined to keep the program going and, ideally, expand it. He's seen the effects of something as simple but otherwise out of reach as a subsidized hockey program on his students' marks and behaviour. And, he has no plans to let that go, he said.
Teacher Melissa Sayer said she saw one student transformed in the months she knew him - behaviorally and academically. His latest writing assignment, a persuasive essay, was about the hockey program - and taking advantage of opportunities.
Mr. Babiy's pie-in-the-sky dream is for a similar program across the Toronto District School Board - one specifically for inner-city students whose parents can neither fork over the thousands of dollars for equipment, ice time and lessons or spend hours a week schlepping to and from the rink, hockey bags in tow.
Brookview's program is part of the larger, national H.E.R.O.S. - the Hockey Education Reaching Out Society. It has 11 chapters dedicated to fostering hockey programs in at-risk communities.
Money, of course, is the biggest object: To start up the Brookview school's program cost $20,000. Although equipment is largely a one-time cost, buying ice-time and arranging transportation for multiple schools across the city would require deeper pockets than Mr. Babiy's.
He has an ally in such big-name sponsors as Telus, which made its $300,000 sponsorship of the national Heroes program official yesterday, and the NHL, which has been supplying equipment for the team.
And in people like Ms. Maxymiw.
"I'd be willing, at the very least, to do this again next year," she said. "I just have a desire for these kids to have what other kids have."
No comments:
Post a Comment